


Patterns

by stardropdream



Category: Kobato
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-24
Updated: 2013-02-24
Packaged: 2017-12-03 10:43:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/697404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardropdream/pseuds/stardropdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fujimoto makes do with the feeling that, despite his best efforts, he always feels like he's lost something precious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Patterns

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ April 6, 2012.

**I.**  
That feeling doesn’t disappear. The empty ache, like he’d lost something precious.   
  
He doesn’t know what it would be. Whatever it is, he knows it’s gone and can’t be replaced. It’s frustrating, being unable even to identify it.   
  
  
**II.**  
Some places are worse than others—  
  
When the nursery classes start and he looks to the entrance, expecting someone—late students?—that never appears.   
  
When he returns home and glances at the door to the room next door, even though he knows it’s been empty for years.  
  
When the sakura bloom and he hears the drunken singing, he finds himself comparing it, although unable to say whose he’s comparing the singing to.   
  
  
**III.**  
It doesn’t go away.  
  
New sights, sounds, smells remind him—  
  
Passing by the candy store, he finds himself lingering on a jar of rock candy.   
  
The toy store causes him pause, and he spends a long time staring at a stuffed blue dog. It feels like the plush is even staring back.   
  
He’s starting to think he might be going a little crazy.  
  
  
 **IV.**  
“Late,” he mutters to himself when he oversleeps for the first time in years. And somehow it is familiar.   
  
As he runs his way to work, he can’t quite explain the pang he feels when he sees Chitose setting an old futon out in the trash.   
  
  
**V.**  
Eventually it fades. It isn’t a sharp pain, but rather a dull ache that reignites at the strangest of times.   
  
Women in hats. Strangely bizarre drawings from the kids.   
  
That stuffed dog never sells. He sees it in the window for years. The day it’s finally gone, he feels a strange kind of nostalgia—thinking maybe he should have bought it after all. Just in case. Just in case of what?   
  
  
**VI.**  
He studies. He makes do. Things work themselves into a pattern.  
  
He’s not sure when the hollow feeling became _normal_ , but it’s too late now for him to expect it to go away.   
  
  
**VII.**  
So it just is.  
  
  
 **VIII.**  
Normal.  
  
Routine.  
  
Empty.


End file.
